Taking a closer look at the not so bad (except for business) Rockets schedule

The best approach, now more than ever, is to tack the Rockets schedule on the wall and not even consider how it will impact the 2011-12 season. Each team plays 66 games. There will be 33 at home; 33 on the road. Let’s get it on.

That would be the prudent, wise and mature approach.

Naturally, we won’t do that. Why start now?

Schedules do make a difference, especially for teams on the bubble. And if there ever was a team stuck there somewhere in the middle, straddling the line between regular-season success and disappointment, it is the Rockets.

The most notable feature of the Rockets schedule is its brutal start. Of the first seven games, six are against playoff teams of a year ago. The seventh is against the up-and-coming Clippers, in LA, on the second half of a back-to-back. After last season, the Rockets should know better than anyone the perils of a slow start.

It does not get much easier in the week or two following that, but schedules do tend to even out when judged by strength of opponent. Every season has particularly grueling stretches with other more manageable portions of the schedule mixed in, too.

In a way, the more you look at it, everything tends to balance out. With the bad, there tends to be good.

The Rockets play 23 back-to-backs, second most of the league. But they will be playing teams in the second half of their own back-to-backs 27 times, also the second-most in the league.

The Rockets play four games in five nights seven times, a pretty healthy number. But they play teams finishing a stretch of four in five nights 12 times.

In the unbalanced schedule of the season’s lockout-compressed schedule, the Rockets will get to play just one game against the Pacers, Pistons, Bucks, Hawks, 76ers, Nets and Cavaliers. But they also only play the Celtics, Knicks, Magic, Heat and Bulls, the Eastern Conference heavyweights, only once. Better still, they still get their two games against the East’s weaklings, Charlotte, Toronto and Washington.

Even the changes to the unbalanced part of the Rockets’ Western Conference schedule are not bad. They play the Mavericks and Lakers only three times. That might not be good for business with as many as seven sure sellouts excised from the schedule, but it could make the schedule more manageable.

It might even make complaining unnecessary. In the it-could-have-been-worse season of the lockout, that might be the best approach. Then again, why start now?